Recently, compact and mobile electronic devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), cellular phones, portable computers, or the like, have become essential for mobile communication, personal data organization, and portable data processing. These mobile devices include the capability to manage, receive, store, process and display personal information such as contact names, phone numbers, appointments, pictures, addresses, preferences, and the like.
A current trend in the communications industry is to equip mobile electronic devices with a wireless communication interface to communicate in an automated fashion with other devices within its communication range. Typically, technologies such as Bluetooth IEEE 802.15, IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b, or the like are used. To facilitate universal communication between these devices, universal communication network connectivity mechanisms have been developed such as Universal Plug and Play (UPnP). UPnP provides an industry standard architecture for pervasive peer-to-peer network connectivity of electronic devices to allow seamless proximity networking. Data may thus be communicated or exchanged between different devices in a flexible manner.
Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) are popular with end users for their ease of use. GUIs are now a necessary element for mobile electronic devices such as PDAs and cellular phones. However, the restricted display monitor size for these compact mobile devices effectively limits the ability of multiple users to share in the experience of viewing and manipulating data from a single mobile electronic device. An additional problem with the current usage model of mobile electronic devices is the difficulty associated with merging the contents of multiple mobile devices on a single display monitor. Yet another problem is the difficulty associated with the transmission of data among multiple mobile devices. Computationally constrained devices cannot easily perform large data transmissions.
Moreover, Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation devices are frequently used in automobiles to collect and display position information. When installed in a vehicle, a GPS receiver can determine a car's position by using the data supplied by satellites, and can provide other useful information. The driver can enter a destination location and the navigation system will calculate the optimal route, distance to destination, and other pertinent information. However, it is often cumbersome and time-consuming to manually enter destinations using the on-screen menus of the navigation system monitor.